


step on our childhood flowers

by soliloquium



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Dorks, F/M, Fluff, High School AU, PruHun, Romance, Slight Humor, Swearing, Teen AU, and has a penchant for lying, but also mutually his undoing, gilberts a bit of a hoe, i cant believe im writing something straight, liz is his stability, oh no, pinning, side aushun, unrequited love? perphaps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-04-12 11:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19130956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliloquium/pseuds/soliloquium
Summary: (He's always been reaching for her in the dark.)Gilbert realizes it's time to grow up. But maybe it's too late.(But she isn't there any more.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 4 am, damn, here we go again. I attempted to sound like a teenager and instead forgot how to write. Tried to get out of a writing slump. Did not work. YA, you are not for me. 
> 
> Anyways, possible two shot, possible three shot. Tad cliche but I love gilbert, if you haven't guessed, and teen prussia is one of my favorite things. He's such a manwhore but also a wreck but also a sweet heart (sort of). 
> 
> this miiiight take a slightly dark turn.

I'm great at winging things. Usually.   
  
I've got experience. Real experience. I'm a fake it until you make it sort of guy. A seasoned actor. With maybe a sprinkle of pathological liar on the side. A _sprinkle._ I've rock climbed an entire mountain without safety gear. Speed written essays on shit I didn't even know existed. Made flaming basked Alaska without a recipe. Did it end in smoke stained walls and a burnt down table? Yes. But that's besides the point. Everyone still believed my cooking mastery, blamed it on poor old Frederick for tripping me over (he didn't).  
  
Anyone can tell the truth. It takes a clever, adept man to put on the confident smirk, to turn your voice into a story, the listener into a played audience, to shove away the crippling self doubt. Or pretend to in any case. But there is nothing to pretend about here.  
  
My palms are annoyingly sweaty. Fuck.   
  
I wipe it away on my jeans discreetly. Trying to scan the sea of stupid, background teenagers for the only one that mattered.

The things I care about most in the world exist in descending order: Other people's opinions of me, me as an entity (large gap), Ludwig, Her, (another, slightly less large gap), female attention (which may or may not include sex), the elegance of brilliant prank, getting away with a brilliant prank, flirting with middle aged police officers to get away with a slightly illegal brilliant prank (this hasn't worked yet, but it will. One day, god damn it).   
  
A good majority of people would say that I have priorities out of wack. But a god majority of those people would claim that they were on Team Edward, so, really, who gives a shit about the masses?  
  
And then my thoughts become irrelevant when I see her. Her.   
  
_Her._

There's a twist of my stomach. Little stabs of nervousness except they aren't little and, for once, I feel so very fucking aware of myself in the worst way. The rational part of my brain slaps the romantic part, telling it to stop being a pussy, that this is just Liz. The same Liz that kicks my ass at Mario Kart, that had shoved me off the swing set when we were seven, that I had shoved off the slide in a burst of harsh but righteous revenge. We were fucking brutal with each other, ripping at the other's walls with the sort of barbaric intent and cold eyes. It used to be with punches, with winning. It used to be about triumph. But now she drops a fucking bomb with words, it doesn't take much, she'll be sitting there, on my couch, flipping through her Instagram feed and say something with a tone so fucking cavalier it almost seems like she doesn't know it leaves me feel so utterly and completely naked. Blase and horrifying all at once.   
  
She knows me. She had managed to know me.

And I couldn't lose that. No fucking way.   
  
So this is the answer. This is my attempt at latching onto the only anchor I've ever had. And she was going to fucking like it.   
  
Inhale. One. Two. Three.  
  
Four. Fuck, okay five. There's a chasm between us made of unimportant people and the school hall. It takes a stupidly enormous amount of effort to take a step forward.   
  
I do it. But it doesn't stop the fact that I'm crushing and that means that whenever I look at her, I feel like I'm hit by a mac-truck. And I'm not even looking at her properly, it's just her back and her stupidly gorgeous head of hair and I know I am so fucking. Unbelievably screwed.  
  
She's a warrior princess in tomboy's clothing. The sun. Fierce, beautiful, and she could set you on fire. Literally. (August 8th, my first attempt at trying a cigarette, she smiled sweetly, took the lighter, told me i was an idiot, and pressed it to the hem of my jacket.)

And I was in love with her. That much was evident. She had unknowingly backed me into a corner, where there were three walls that read "Crippling Loneliness & Meaningless Sex" and she was the only exit. And I was walking towards it.   
  
Praying to a god I didn't believe in that this wouldn't result in awkwardly avoiding each other in the halls for the next year or so, I opened my mouth.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: i was not fully cognizant whilst writing this. 
> 
> by which I mean, its general questionable quality is even more questionable.

The first day I go to Eliza's house, it is also, coincidentally, the first day of school. We're eight and covered in mud and we've escaped the diligent eyes of our second grade teacher (a genius plan, really, we plant slugs in Roderich's lunch box and his ensuing shrieks capture the attention of everyone in the room). 

I remember the trek. The one block we needed to walk to get there stretched out as vastly as the amazon, picket fences towering over us like poisonous trees and her. Indomitable and relentless, pretending to not give a shit with her tiny chin jutting out provocatively. I grabbed her hand then and she had squeezed back. The beginning seeds of our symbiotic relationship being sown.

I remember the house. White and pretty and sprawling. The sort of stupidly pristine and obnoxiously extravagant that you saw in coloring books and Disney movies, the sort I didn't know existed. 

I remember her mom. Flower-print apron, coiffed hair and lipsticked lips and everything own my work-exhausted mother wasn't. Staring down in thinly veiled horror at her daughter and the grubby thin little boy with the t shirt two days too old that had rendered her unrecognizable.

She had absolutely no idea what to do with me.

And that's sort of what I felt then. 

Fuck, forget confessing, I wasn't even given a fucking warning before she was transformed. Like a reverse frog kiss. As quickly as I had opened my mouth, I had shut it. She didn't even look at me as she turned away to press her lips to his, walking away as the bell rang, a funeral march. 

She didn't even look at me.

Whatever fumbling butterflies I had felt promptly died. Of a terminal illness. It was long over due. 

So there I was; sitting on the back steps like a fucking pussy ass bitch because whatever fucking indelible mark I thought we'd left on each other had clearly not been mutual. Maybe I should have seen this in retrospect. Eliza had always fixated on Roderich with ferocious dislike. She paid attention. And if she paid attention, that usually meant respect. Evidently, this was more than that. The moment she had spent fifteen minutes on a tangent on the annoying timbre of his nasal laugh, I had lost her. 

My best friend and partner in crime was dead and don't fucking tell me I'm being over dramatic because I know I am but I'm also not. We used to be everything; every forced school play, our roles were complimentary, every class, partners, every dance, we'd stare at the floor of love sick idiots and mutually agree that romance was stupid. Our hands would always hold to each others. Sometimes sweating, nervous, sometimes angry, the nails digging into skin. But letting go was never even a possibility.

Until now.

Just then, as I mentally contemplate whether I should spring for setting fire to Roderich's car, egging his house or something with a tad more originality and a nice, vindictive middle round of destroyed property, I get a message. 

_Hey. Sorry I lowkey ignored you earlier, tad pre-occupied, OVW at 5?_

Then I did what any sane, mature person would do. I blocked her.

Then, because I am very much not a sane, mature person, I unblock her, typing vigorously.

_Fuck you, Héderváry._

Nothing sent home chills to one's enemy like punctuation and correct syntax. I was a fucking monster. 

She sent me the confused pikachu meme, quickly followed by a  _r u high???_ and  _w/e. Meet me in person at our spot at 3._

I slipped my phone into my pocket, determined to not give a shit. I'd be there at 3:15 like a boss. 

In the mean time, I'd plot. Not because I cared.

But because revenge was warranted. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh gilbert, gilbert, gilbert, smh  
> also, I swear, my writing gets progressively worse as this goes on.   
> I didn't really intend to update this but this story is simple, its stupid and its something.  
> Which is always better than nothing, guys ;0
> 
> here's the meme of surprised pikachu for all my poor, ignorant readers out there : https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/027/475/Screen_Shot_2018-10-25_at_11.02.15_AM.png

**Author's Note:**

> Feed back is loved. and screenshotted. and those screenshots are stroked whenever I feel the need for motivation. Which is obviously always.


End file.
